Friday, 25 June 2010

The Times paywall of death

hat-tip Guido for the title. The paywall has gone up, and I am a Times reader so I miss reading some of it on my BlackBerry. I shall especially miss Oliver Kamm's column. I would not previously have considered paying for this kind of content on line, but now I have my iPad (did I mention that before?) it will be a joy to read. So, yes, probably. I doubt the Murdoch empire thought about the iPad effect when they started all this, but I am sure I am not alone. Guido thinks the paywall will kill off the readership. I do not agree.

4 comments:

Jonathan
said...

I think it will kill off their readership, even if the amount of money involved isn't that big for most people, the very act of asking people to get their credit card details out forces them to think about whether or not it is worth the money. When you can find other news sites on the internet much more easily than you can find your credit card, most people won't go ahead.

The Times certainly will see a drop in traffic but that's like losing all those people who read your publication in WH Smith and then put it down and don't buy it - you can afford to lose those people as they cost money (mangled magazine in the newsagent, hosting/bandwidth online) but bring in no income. OK so a small number might be turned into spenders but I bet the numbers are time. I blogged on this some time ago: http://philsworkbench.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-web-future.html

I suspect RM has worked this out and is hoping that while he retains a profitable and cheap to service bunch of online readers, the "tyre kickers" will head off to his competitiors pushing their costs up and yet handing over no income.

At the nd of the day, writers and journalists still need to be paid. Reading up on this story, nearly everyone is refering back to a tiny number of sources, which they haven't paid for, and adding a little bit of waffle themselves. Someone still has to make those originals sources from somewhere and if they want to eat...